"Bro?" Mayra called out. The thoughts in her head rushing like Niagara Falls. But Eddie had left when she'd asked him to give her space. She'd observed that the wall was dented with screws and the marks ran in all directions around them.

Mayra got up and scanned the rest of the walls of the house. The walls of the living room, the kitchen, the bedroom, and the staircase, were all etched with rectangular or circular marks in brown and black. All of them with the black imprints had screws protruding from them. The staircase walls specifically had the most impressions that descended downwards.

She rushed outside trying to look for Ed, and just on cue bumped into him as she was making her way to the backyard.

"Dude!" Eddie exclaimed, his brown eyes tingling with anticipation.

"I found something," both of them blurted out in unison.

"You go first," Eddie said, knowing how eager Mayra was to reveal her findings. Like a kid showing off her first Nintendo Switch.

"Ok so these marks on the wall, right?"

"Yeah?"

"They're everywhere if you look closely, some recent while some not so recent and all the walls with marks have screws protruding outta them," she said her mouth running fast, trying to keep up with her brain.

"And like you know how you hang picture frames on the walls, and then you remove 'em after a while for no absolute reason, few of them usually do leave marks if your walls are light enough."

"And..."

"I don't know why but I'm just getting a feeling like he's probably hiding something. There were loads of photo frames hung on the walls, especially the staircase, but he just removed them or some shit."

"Give yourself a pat on the back for figuring that out," Eddie remarked, as he let her eyes fall on the darkroom above. The windows were shut and the blinds were drawn, confirming her deductions.

"I don't think we investigated that room," Eddie said in a low whisper.

"Fuck."

"Fuck indeed."

They rushed back into the house, and sure enough, a tall wardrobe sat in the hallway upstairs. Oddly kept in the middle, obscuring most of the space. It didn't just drop out of nowhere. It was there earlier, but their brains were too occupied to notice. Mayra mentally cursed herself for being so inattentive. Taking help from Eddie, she tried to move the wardrobe away from the concealed room. After much energy expended and acquiring splinters on their hands and back from the rough wooden texture, they finally managed to move it. At least to an extent where the doorknob was visible, and there was enough space for them to move inside.

"If it's locked, I swear I will not hesitate to yeet that man off a cliff," Mayra muttered in vexation as Eddie turned the doorknob.

Much to their surprise, they heard a click after the turn. And the door slightly slid open.

Mayra expected a foul smell to clog her nose, the kind of smell that would freeze her insides, the kind of smell that would inevitably give her harrowing nightmares of her past. The kind of smell she'd always have to encounter in her life. But no such smell crept up to her nose. Her eyebrows scrunched in skepticism but simultaneously, a ripple of relief washed over her.

No dead bodies here. Hopefully.

Eddie's coffee-brown eyes fixated on her implied that she should go in first. Mayra stepped into the room through the cramped space while Eddie followed after her. The room was dark, most contents shrouded under the black clouds of dusk.

Mayra hated the dark. She suffocated in it. She didn't necessarily have nyctophobia, meaning she could bear darkness under non-spine-chilling circumstances. Emphasis on the word bear. But she still felt like she was being devoured by the black matter that surrounded her regularly. Felt like she was alone and helpless. That she was a seven-year-old girl, running through the thicket, dodging the thick barks, bearing the twigs that scarred her arms. The sky as dark as the obsidian, marked with the crescent that eerily burned yellow and the river of stars that ignited the cosmos. Running and running, running as fast as her small feet bare feet could carry her feeble body. The house behind her lit up in flames. And he was probably after her, his footsteps, heavy and tracing her path, breaking every branch that she managed to jump over. She'd seen a small burrow, a few feet towards the right, and sped her pace. He was behind but not too behind. So she jumped into the burrow. Seeking refuge from him. Seeking refuge from a gruesome death. She sat there in the burrow, listening to his footsteps closing up on her. Her heart racing fast, incredibly fast that she thought she'd die. At least she'd found a grave to die in. But he passed by it, not giving a second thought to the small excavation in the ground. But she wouldn't dare come out of it. Not for the night. She would sit there, scared and awake with the thought of him still searching for her. She would sit there in the dark, in this hurt, anticipating her death, suffocating for breath.

It was dark. So very dark.

Since her job required her to investigate dark warehouses, alleys, and tight spaced dark apartments, she sucked it up and did it.

She switched on the light and what came into view next was unforeseen.

A teenager's bedroom.

Loaded with One Direction posters. One of Harry Styles behind the door, the other of Niall Horan, near the window. The bedside table was occupied with all sorts of merch and more pictures. A framed newspaper piece, of the New York Times, read: "One Direction finally back after a 9 year break up. Eiffel Tower, Empire State, and The Colosseum light up in their honor."

"Some crazy fan, he was," Ed muttered, his honey-brown eyes scanning the very normal room that was hidden behind the wardrobe.

"Why would someone hide this?" Mayra chuckled, but she knew deep down that something absurd was buried in the room too.

"He probably prizes his collection over everything else, so much that before going to jail he hid 'em up."

"But now we found it," Mayra smirked. "Can I please take that Harry doll?."

"Why?" Eddie questioned, rolling his eyes at her fangirl antics.

"Bro, it's a Harry Styles doll. A HARRY FUCKING STYLES DOLL: EXCLUSIVE EDITION. How could you not take it?"

"Mayra, we're at a serial killer's house that could possibly be a crime scene. And also you're stealing."

"From a serial killer. He deserves it."

"You're evil."

"So I've been told," Mayra smirked even harder as she tried to annoy her partner.

Searching through the room, Mayra found a bunch of photo frames, sitting under the bed. She pulled them out expected to be covered in dust, instead all were polished and clean. Eddie sat down beside her, inspecting the pictures inside the frames.

One of them had Blake in the center, a middle-aged blonde woman on his left and a teenage boy on his right, smiling widely as the sun made their faces gleam, reflecting their happiness.

The other was from a snowy mountain top, the three of them geared up in ski boots, looking all ready to take a slide down the mountains.

Another from a beach, Blake and his assumed son captured playing volleyball as the sun hid from the world, down the shimmering water.

And so many others, depicting a happy marriage and a happy family.

Eddie scoffed, "He had a family."

"Where are they now?" Mayra questioned as she shut down the most gruesome scenarios that were going through her head. But knowing that this hell of a creature killed thirty-five people, there wasn't any point in shutting them out. She knew that these innocent people had served the same fate.

"He probably murdered them ruthlessly, a fucking bastard."

Something tugged at Mayra's brain. Something sharp, something that screamed that her answer was so wrong that it deserved an F minus. The pieces didn't click this time.

They'd found the marks on the wall and that clicked with the fact that he was hiding more than what they knew. Which further clicked with the hidden room that Eddie discovered. And now they'd found the picture frames that were upon those light floral walls. But now her deduction had suddenly threw a sledgehammer to the pieces that they had so hardly built. Her deductions were something that dismantled the whole model. She sat there, looking at the pictures in her hand, and thought. Thought deeper than she was even capable of.

"This doesn't make sense though," she heard Eddie say out loud. "I know right? This literally just shitted up my entire brain," Mayra replied.

"Ok so let's assume that he did kill them," Mayra continued placing her thoughts into words. She found that this helped her solve complicated issues.

"Yeah, but he wouldn't get anything out of it unless he's a psychopath which he definitely is," Eddie joined her, keeping his thoughts on his tongue now.

"Exactly, also if he did kill them, why hide your apparent son's bedroom with a fucking wardrobe? Why would you even try to hide that shit up and from whom? Like I'm pretty sure the neighbors knew them and knew something was up if they hadn't seen his wife and son for days so you wouldn't get anything out of hiding it."

"Exactly, except he could've used this to store their bodies?" Eddie questioned.

"But then later took it to the warehouse to burn them?"

"Yeah but no matter how long ago he killed them this place would've stunk, his whole house would've stunk, his neighbors would've known for sure and would probably call up the police," Eddie answered.

"Unless he used an air freshener but then this place would smell like lemons. And it's not smelling like lemons plus, you and I both know very well that the smell of dead bodies just doesn't go away that easily. It smells like a damn house in here," Mayra said, getting a bit short-tempered because this was reaching nowhere.

"So he killed them somewhere else?"

"Maybe."

"But why would he hide this place up?"

"I don't know, ughh, unless he's hiding something beneath this floor, which isn't possible," Mayra said rubbing her fingers over the smooth black plastic frame of the picture. "Weird how these are supposed to be doused in dust but they're not," Mayra wondered out loud.

"Unless he hid these today?"

"Plausible but why? You've already called the police on yourself for murdering thirty-five people and now want to cover up your tracks for murdering your family, that's just stupid on so many levels."

"But what if he didn't want to cover his tracks but his family's? What if he has this whole cult of murderers?"

"That's fucking crazy."

Mayra pondered over Eddie's judgment. The thought of his wife and the teenage guy being a murderer was crazy but it was almost believable. This was the kind of shit you'd read in crazy stories where there wasn't any plot but just to make it intense the author would throw the whole family into picture. (No pun intended).

"The game is on," Mayra said, an excited smile plastered over her face from the new twisted angle that had been given to the mystery.

They gathered the three useless people that had now slouched outside the house, snoozing as the sun rose. And they were off to the office to unveil their findings. 

A/N: HELLO ITS ME. I WAS WONDERING IF AFTER ALL THESE YEARS YOU'D LIKE TO MEET TO GO OVER EVERYTHING AHBDJSK I SHALL STOP MY DUMBASS RIGHT HERE. 

N E WAYS HOW ARE YOU ALL DOING? YOU ARE LOVED AND VALUED. DO NOT FORGET THAT. I AM SO THANKFUL FOR EACH ONE OF YOU. YOU ALL MAKE MY HEART GO AHGFDEGFUGWFUGWU. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR APPRECIATING THIS BOOK EVEN THO I AM VERY UNPUNCTUAL( is that a word?) AUTHOR WHO GIVES UPDATES AFTER AGES. THANKS SO MUCH FOR ALL THE SUPPORT I LOVE YOU ALL. HERE IS A HUG ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ

also i received this pm saying: eddie and mayra should be the endgame or they will bring endgame upon me. LEMME CLARIFY: EDDIE AND MAYRA ARE AMAZING FRIENDS AND THIS IS A OC X P.PARKER BOOK SO I AM SORRY BUT WE ALL KNOW WHO THE ENDGAME IS GONNA BE. OR DO WE ? *DUN DUN DUN * ¯\_( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)_/¯

if you have any more questions, comment them ^_____^